The present invention relates to a driving dynamics control system for vehicles, including at least one signal distribution to which vehicle data, environment data and data regarding the driver's request are sent in the form of input data, and including several controllable or regulatable subsystems which modify the dynamics of the vehicle such as a driver-independently adjustable steering system, a driver-independently adjustable chassis, a driver-independently adjustable brake, and a driver-independently adjustable driving track.
Both comfort and safety engineering in vehicles gain in significance. The result is that vehicles are equipped with electronic and electromechanical components or subsystems at an increasing rate. Each subsystem necessitates its own control unit in order to render sensor signals plausible, condition them, to calculate corrective signals and adjust its actuators. Each of these subsystems or control units operates, however, on its own (stand-alone) and often does not know about the others.
Apart from comfort systems such as automatic window lifters, inside adjusters of the outside rear-view mirrors, etc., mainly the number of subsystems for influencing or improving the driving performance or the driving dynamics and for improving safety is significantly rising. The trend to more electronics and electromechanics can also be found in the subsystems for influencing the driving performance or driving dynamics, respectively. Among the subsystems that allow influencing the driving performance actively, that means irrespective of the driver, are the electronic brake system, the active steering system, active and semi-active chassis components, and also the driving system in vehicles with controllable intermediate gears. Each of these subsystems is meant to influence the vehicle in such a manner that improvements in the driving performance are achieved. Depending on the subsystem concerned, the control algorithms have their focus in different fields (safety, handling, or comfort). Therefore, the subsystems are primarily tuned only for their respective control target or their main range of application, respectively. The ranges of application or the focuses of the individual subsystems overlap each other, however, in wide ranges of the driving dynamics-related range of application of vehicles. Each of these subsystems works on its own (stand-alone), although frequently the same driving dynamics quantities are intended to be influenced or controlled (FIG. 1 relating to the example of the horizontal control). This causes a very great complexity of application, above all for the mutual protection of the individual subsystems with respect to each other, and results in functional restrictions for each subsystem (i.e. each subsystem is unable to reach its control target in an ideal manner because it must not limit or hinder the other subsystems).